This is probably going to sound very inconsequential and schoolyard - please bear with me. I don't feel like I have anyone I can really talk to about it at the moment and I'm finding it all really upsetting.

Background: I was part of a roller derby team from November 2009. Me and a few other girls left in May 2010 and set up our own team as the circumstances of the old team were becoming unbearable. We had a sham committee, all decisions were made by the chair without giving the committee or team any chance to have any input, the bank accounts were secret, the amount of respect given to people by the chair seemed gauged by financial contribution, the list goes on and on.Since setting up the new team there have been three main protagonists who I will call The Gorgons and they seem to have made the whole thing about them.

Now: They've played in all the bouts we've been invited to play in (There have only been 6 people selected from a pool of 12 so far, including The Gorgons. One of The Gorgons is on the training committee so gets to influence decisions on who bouts and who doesn't. How ironic.).

They have put their own photos into the majority of our PR literature (One of The Gorgons is head of PR. Are we seeing the irony again?).

Up until recently at least two of The Gorgons have secretly gone to train with a more advanced team on a regular basis, thereby not affording the rest of the team the opportunity to do so.

None of the rest of the team's efforts seems to be good enough - we haven't raised enough money, we haven't passed our minimum skills test fast enough, we don't have the best uniforms, etc.

There have been rumors that The Gorgons believe that they are the directors of the team, despite there being a committee and chair (who is not a Gorgon) however more seriously than this, there is rumor that the main Gorgon rigged the result of the vote for a new chairperson. The chair is impartial and perfectly capable of fulfilling her role - nobody has any problems with her being the chair, however the fact remains that our little piece of democracy has been pissed on.

The Gorgons want us to have our debut bout in May but I, and several others, think this is too soon - but the unholy trinity won't take no for an answer. We're not trained and practiced enough and we really won't have enough money to fund it, but they're pushing for at least two fundraisers between Jan and May without considering the possibility that we won't have enough money. The main Gorgon has even said that we should 'steal' the events organizer from another team in order to help us do this, which has made me feel that my abilities as events organizer are being completely overlooked and unappreciated.

I need to talk to the chairperson about all of the above but she's stuck in a hospital hundreds of miles away at the moment and won't be home for a while. My closest friends know about it all and are just as pissed as I am. One of them is considering leaving the team as she can't allow all this bullshiitake to interfere with her degree, and now I'm considering leaving. I love the sport with a passion but I just can't deal with the unnecessary drama that's being created by The Gorgons.

As previously mentioned one of them is the head of PR, one is on the training committee (and is also the team secretary) and the other is the treasurer. They've had talkings-to about their collective attitude already but it's clearly done no good as they're persisting in their behavior. I really want to have a confrontation but I need to know that the rest of the girls have my back first, but I refuse to run around telling everyone the rumors. The only think I can think of doing in order to to stop these backhanded shenanigans is to remove any sort of power they have by voting them off the committee at the AGM but I don't know if I can last that long.

I've been involved with a derby league split for similar reasons, but it was mostly successful (and it was a whole league, not just a team).

Why are these three women being allowed to bully everyone? Is there something about the way the decision-making structure is organized? Adults rigging a sports team election is just sad. You all need to call them on this bullshiitake. You worked hard to build a team with organizational structure you all wanted, and you shouldn't let a couple of people rob you of that.

Also, if skaters are having a hard time passing a minimum skills test, it's a really bad idea to push them to bout before they're ready. That can be dangerous. I don't know how the sport is developing in England, but one of the reasons I'm not skating, even though I've moved back to a place with derby is the sport has been bumped up about 1,000 notches in the past two years, and I don't have the time right now to train the way I'd need to to skate successfully.

I didn't know how to skate when I started and was slow to pass skills tests. It was frustrating, but in the end being held back was good for me and I was totally ready by the time I bouted. Are some people not being selected to play because they're not ready, or are people on the training committee not willing to acknowledge progress less experienced skaters have made? Also, do you all not play by WFTDA rules? Why would only six of 12 players play during a bout? I've been on a 7-woman team and that was EXHAUSTING.

Anyhow, none of this is helpful. Sorry. But I do sympathized and hope you get your team back on track.

I honestly don't know any one reason why they're being allowed to continue to behave like this. I think it may be because their behavior is objectionable due to several small reasons, each small reason sounds petty (apart from the vote rigging) and people are afraid to speak up. They are going to be called out on the vote rigging, it's just a matter of when and where. We really need to wait for our chair to come home and recover from her operation.

We do play by the WFTDA rules. The bouts we're invited to play in are made up of mixed teams, they're often the debut of a newly min skills passed skater. It's pretty common in the UK now for a bout to be made up of two bouts - the first hour is the new skaters bout and the second hour is the host team Vs an away team from elsewhere in the country. The reason they're not selecting other players to take part on bouts is because they want to bout themselves - they don't afford others the opportunity out of selfishness.

Wow. They sound like mega crassholes. Someone should point out to them they'll skate better if they sit out a few jams from time to time. Good luck.Sometimes, it seems like roller derby just wants to break your heart.